I heard a cry, shallow but painful in the dark inflicting after hours. I knew who that was. I could sense its pain running through my veins.

But I ignored.

Back to the digital bright blue screen of my laptop, keeping a pace with the busy life as it had become. Then I heard something falling. As if you hang pictures on a wall and they fall all of a sudden. I knew what had happened. I knew I was at fault.

But I ignored.

Perhaps I have been hearing this squeaking and scratching sounds for several months but I kept ignoring. Sometimes you need more courage to face your past then just a long stare back at it.

I heard it called my name now.

Called me as someone had put a poisoned knife through its throat. Shallow but deeply painful. I couldn’t ignore. And I went to look. It peeked through a page then shut the book with force. With such a force that some words fall onto my feet as if dry leaves fall off a tree. I picked those words up and kept them aside. I felt their anger. As, I remember writing some of those words. Inked them on paper and then bind them in a book. They formed the most beautiful memories I’ve ever had. How could I forget them?

I had a very deep connection with the characters I built, all of them. No matter if they were evil, good, machines, animals or humans. But, I have lived each of them. Perhaps they left a part of themselves in me. They call me if I stay out of touch for long.

Perhaps I need to rekindle my relationship with them. Give them some new friends. Some new places. Some exciting plots. Some life.

Imagine it being a sapling of a remorse. On its twigs, a thousand moons have cried upon their light. In it’s shadow, a hundred suns have lost their existence. But, in the same, those dying suns have disapparated into blossoms. Each of which, holds a haunting.

First of all I would like to say thank you to Ana for allowing me to write this post for her blog. Before I write about my experience photographing the war in Syria let me give you a brief bio. My name is Russell Chapman, I’m 45, from the UK but now living in Lugano, Switzerland. I first got into photography when I was about 10. I was fascinated by the ability to capture a moment in time and loved how the scene in the viewfinder became, for a moment, my entire world. In fact this is something that has always stayed with me. I started off with a very simple point and shoot 35mm film camera, yes I’m from the pre-digital age. I got books from the library on photography in order to learn the science behind the art. It was quite a learning curve for a 10 year…

“A light year” – is the distance in length travelled by light relative to a single Julian year (365.25 days) of earth. Total distance a light travels in a Julian year is around 5.878 trillion miles. Which makes the speed of light at exact 186,282.4 miles per second in a vaccum. Yes that’s “per second” – the single most unified unit of time.

Just to give you an assumption of how fast the light is; consider a beam of light is shot at one end of earth, it will reach to the same point, travelling around the circumference of earth which is 24,859.82 miles, in 0.133 seconds. That means, the same beam of light will complete its 7 orbits around earth in just one second.

This speed of light is universally constant. And in the whole wide universe – 92 Billion light years across – nothing, yet, travels faster than the speed of light – quantum physicists though won’t agree to it. It was the great mind of Albert Einstein who defined to us how light works. What it is made of. And how relative it is with time, through his theory of General Relativity and photoelectric effect.

Our universe is 13.7 Billion years old. That’s the time of BigBang. And our solar system, dominated by The Sun, is about 5.4 Billion years old. And our blue planet, our earth, is around 5 Billion years old.

This difference of age between the existence of universe and our solar system proves that before us, for 8 billion years, this universe still existed. And thrived. And expanded exponentially. And through the destruction and construction of stars and their stardust, our solar system evolved. And ultimately after millions of years of evolution, through single cell organisms, humans came into being. We are made of stardust.

Our universe is comprised of galaxies, blackholes, stars, nebulas, planets, dark energy and dark matter. There are around 400 Billion galaxies in our Universe. And in the galaxy where our solar system is growing old has more than 400 Million Stars. Each one like our Sun. Many similar, many more massive, and many more powerful.

Our closest star system is Centauri. There are not one but three stars in that system. Their planets however are undiscovered. Among them the closest star is Alpha centauri. And it is about 4.5 light years away. Which means if we plan to travel there for any space adventure at the speed of light, aforementioned, we shall reach in 4 years and 5 months. Its just another star in our galaxy of 400 Million stars.

Our closest galaxy, The Andromeda, is about 4.5 Million light years away. It has its own stars, its own blackholes and its own planets. Andromeda and Milkyway are just two galaxies out of 400 Billion in Universe.

I would have to write a full book to explain everything I have talked about here. It would perhaps take me a lifetime considering my schedule nowadays.

Remember to look up, to the stars and see where have you come from. There are others out there. Somewhere, in some blue planet orbiting around a yellow dying star. You have neighbors. Still to be found.